Did Mao Really Kill Millions in the Great Leap Forward?

Over the last 25 years the reputation of Mao Zedong has been
seriously undermined by ever more extreme estimates of the numbers of deaths he
was supposedly responsible for. In his lifetime, Mao Zedong was hugely respected
for the way that his socialist policies improved the welfare of the Chinese
people, slashing the level of poverty and hunger in China and providing free
health care and education. Mao's theories also gave great inspiration to those
fighting imperialism around the world. It is probably this factor that explains
a great deal of the hostility towards him from the Right. This is a tendency
that is likely to grow more acute with the apparent growth in strength of Maoist
movements in India and Nepal in recent years, as well as the continuing
influence of Maoist movements in other parts of the world.

Most of the attempts to undermine Mao's reputation centre around the Great
Leap Forward that began in 1958. It is this period that this article is
primarily concerned with. The peasants had already started farming the land co-
operatively in the 1950s. During the Great Leap Forward they joined large
communes consisting of thousands or tens of thousands of people. Large-scale
irrigation schemes were undertaken to improve agricultural productivity. Mao's
plan was to massively increase both agricultural and industrial production. It
is argued that these policies led to a famine in the years 1959-61 (although
some believe the famine began in 1958). A variety of reasons are cited for the
famine. For example, excessive grain procurement by the state or food being
wasted due to free distribution in communal kitchens. It has also been claimed
that peasants neglected agriculture to work on the irrigation schemes or in the
famous 'backyard steel furnaces' (small-scale steel furnaces built in rural
areas).

Mao admitted that problems had occurred in this period. However, he blamed
the majority of these difficulties on bad weather and natural disasters. He
admitted that there had been policy errors too, which he took responsibility
for.

Official Chinese sources, released after Mao's death, suggest that 16.5
million people died in the Great Leap Forward. These figures were released
during a ideological campaign by the governement of Deng Xiaoping against the
legacy of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. However, there
seems to be no way of independently, authenticating these figures due to the
great mystery about how they were gathered and preserved for twenty years before
being released to the general public. American researchers managed to increase
this figure to around 30 million by combining the Chinese evidence with
extrapolations of their own from China's censuses in 1953 and 1964. Recently,
Jung Chang and Jon Halliday in their book Mao: the Unknown Story
reported 70 million killed by Mao, including 38 million in the Great Leap
Forward.

Western writers on the subject have taken a completely disproportionate view
of the period, mesmerised, as they are, by massive death toll figures from
dubious sources . They concentrate only on policy excesses and it is likely that
their
views on the damage that these did are greatly exaggerated. There has been a
failure to understand how some of the policies developed in the Great Leap
Forward actually benefited the Chinese people, once the initial disruption was
over.

US state agencies have provided assistance to those with a negative attitude
to Maoism (and communism in general) throughout the post-war period. For
example, the veteran historian of Maoism Roderick MacFarquhar edited The
China
Quarterly) in the 1960s. This magazine published allegations about massive
famine
deaths that have been quoted ever since. It later emerged that this journal
received money from a CIA front organisation, as MacFarquhar admitted in a
recent letter to The London Review of Books. (Roderick MacFarquhar
states that
he did not know the money was coming from the CIA while he was editing The
China
Quarterly.

Those who have provided qualitative evidence, such as eyewitness accounts
cited by Jasper Becker in his famous account of the period Hungry Ghosts
, have
not provided enough accompanying evidence to authenticate these accounts.
Important documentary evidence quoted by Chang and Halliday concerning the Great
Leap Forward is presented in a demonstrably misleading way.

Evidence from the Deng Xiaoping regime Mao that millions died during the
Great Leap Forward is not reliable. Evidence from peasants contradicts the
claim that Mao was mainly to blame for the deaths that did occur during the
Great Leap Forward period.

US demographers have tried to use death rate evidence and other demographic
evidence from official Chinese sources to prove the hypothesis that there was a
'massive death toll' in the Great Leap Forward (i.e. a hypothesis that the
'largest famine of all time' or 'one of the largest famines of all time' took
place during the Great Leap Forward). However, inconsistencies in the evidence
and overall doubts about the source of their evidence undermines this 'massive
death toll' hypothesis.

The More Likely Truth About The Great Leap Forward

The idea that 'Mao was responsible for genocide' has been used as a
springboard to rubbish everything that the Chinese people achieved during Mao's
rule. However, even someone like the demographer Judith Banister, one of the
most prominent advocates of the 'massive death toll' hypothesis has to admit the
successes of the Mao era. She writes how in 1973-5 life expectancy in China was
higher than in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and many countries in Latin
America (1). In 1981 she co-wrote an article where she described the People's
Republic of China as a 'super-achiever' in terms of mortality reduction, with
life expectancy increasing by approximately 1.5 years per calendar year since
the start of communist rule in 1949 (2). Life expectancy increased from 35 in
1949 to 65 in the 1970s when Mao's rule came to an end (3).

To read many modern commentators on Mao's China (4), you would get the
impression that Mao's agricultural and industrial policies led to absolute
economic disaster. Even more restrained commentators, such as the economist
Peter Nolan (5) claim that living standards did not rise in China, during the
post-revolutionary period, until Deng Xiaoping took power. Of course, increases
in living standards are not the sole reason for increases in life expectancy.
However, it is absurd to claim that life expectancy could have increased so much
during the Mao era with no increase in living standards.

For example, it is claimed by many who have studied figures released by Deng
Xiaoping after Mao's death that per capita grain production did not increase at
all during the Mao period (6). But how is it possible to reconcile such
statistics with the figures on life expectancy that the same authors quote?
Besides which these figures are contradicted by other figures. Guo Shutian, a
Former Director of Policy and Law in the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture, in the
post-Mao era, gives a very different view of China's overall agricultural
performance during the period before Deng's 'reforms'. It is true that he
writes that agricultural production decreased in five years between 1949-1978
due to 'natural calamities and mistakes in the work'. However he states that
during 1949-1978 the per hectare yield of land sown with food crops increased by
145.9% and total food production rose 169.6%. During this period China's
population grew by 77.7%. On these figures, China's per capita food production
grew from 204 kilograms to 328 kilograms in the period in question (7).

Even according to figures released by the Deng Xiaoping regime, industrial
production increased by 11.2% per year from 1952-1976 (by 10% a year during the
alleged catastrophe of the Cultural Revolution). In 1952 industry was 36% of
gross value of national output in China. By 1975 industry was 72% and
agriculture was 28%. It is quite obvious that Mao's supposedly disastrous
socialist economic policies paved the way for the rapid (but inegalitarian and
unbalanced) economic development of the post-Mao era (8).

There is a good argument to suggest that the policies of the Great Leap
Forward actually did much to sustain China's overall economic growth, after an
initial period of disruption. At the end of the 1950s, it was clear that China
was going to have to develop using its own resources and without being able to
use a large amount of machinery and technological know-how imported from the
Soviet Union.

In the late '50's China and the USSR were heading for a schism. Partly, this
was the ideological fall-out that occurred following the death of Stalin.
There had been differences between Stalin and Mao. Among other things, Mao
believed that Stalin mistrusted the peasants and over-emphasized the development
of heavy industry. It is important not to exaggerate the nature of these
differences, however. Mao vehemently opposed the way Khruschev denounced Stalin
in 1956. Mao believed that Khruschev was using his
denunciation of 'Stalinism' as a cover for the progressive ditching of socialist
ideology and practice in the USSR.

The split was due to the tendency of Khruschev to try and impose the
Soviet Union's own ways of doing things on its allies. Khruschev acted not in
the spirit of socialist internationalism but rather in the spirit of treating
economically less developed nations like client states. For a country like
China, that had fought so bitterly for its freedom from foreign domination, such
a relationship could never have been acceptable. Mao could not have sold it to
his people, even if he had wanted to.

In 1960 the conflict between the two nations came to a head. The Soviets
had been providing a great deal of assistance for China's industrialization
program. In 1960, all Soviet technical advisers left the country. They took
with them the blueprints of the various industrial plants they had been planning
to build.

Mao made clear that , from the start, the policies of the Great Leap Forward
were about China developing a more independent economic policy. China's
alternative to reliance on the USSR was a program for developing agriculture
alongside the development of industry. In so doing, Mao wanted to use the
resources that China could muster in abundance-labour and popular enthusiasm.
The use of these resources would make up for the lack of capital and advanced
technology.

Although problems and reversals occurred in the Great Leap Forward, it is
fair to say that it had a very important role in the ongoing development of
agriculture. Measures such as water conservancy and irrigation allowed for
sustained increases in agricultural production, once the period of bad harvests
was over. They also helped the countryside to deal with the problem of drought.
Flood defenses were also developed. Terracing helped gradually increase the
amount of cultivated area (9).

Industrial development was carried out under the slogan of 'walking on two
legs'. This meant the development of small and medium scale rural industry
alongside the development of heavy industry. As well as the steel furnaces, many
other workshops and factories were opened in the countryside. The idea was that
rural industry would meet the needs of the local population. Rural workshops
supported efforts by the communes to modernize agricultural work methods. Rural
workshops were very effective in providing the communes with fertilizer, tools,
other agricultural equipment and cement (needed for water conservation schemes)
(10).

Compared to the rigid, centralized economic system that tended to prevail in
the Soviet Union, the Great Leap Forward was a supreme act of lateral thinking.
Normally, cement and fertilizer, for example, would be produced in large
factories in urban areas away from the rural areas that needed them. In a poor
country there would be the problem of obtaining the capital and machinery
necessary to produce industrial products such as these, using the most modern
technique. An infrastructure linking the cities to the towns would then be
needed to transport such products once they were made. This in itself would
involve vast expense. As a result of problems like these, development in many
poorer countries is either very slow or does not occur at all.

Rural industry established during the Great Leap Forward used labour-
intensive rather than capital-intensive methods. As they were serving local
needs, they were not dependent on the development of an expensive nation-wide
infrastructure of road and rail to transport the finished goods.

In fact the supposedly wild, chaotic policies of the Great Leap Forward
meshed together quite well, after the problems of the first few years. Local
cement
production allowed water conservancy schemes to be undertaken. Greater
irrigation made it
possible to spread more fertilizer. This fertilizer was, in turn, provided by
the local factories. Greater agricultural productivity would free up more
agricultural labour for the industrial manufacturing sector, facilitating the
overall development of the country (11). This approach is often cited as an
example of Mao's economic illiteracy (what about the division of labour and the
gains from regional specialization etc). However, it was right for China as the
positive effects of Mao's policies in terms of human welfare and economic
development show.

Agriculture and small scale rural industry were not the only sector to grow
during China's socialist period. Heavy industry grew a great deal in this period
too. Developments such as the establishment of the Taching oil field during the
Great Leap Forward provided a great boost to the development of heavy industry.
A massive oil field was developed in China (12) This was developed after 1960
using indigenous techniques, rather than Soviet or western techniques.
(Specifically the workers used pressure from below to help extract the oil.
They did not rely on constructing a multitude of derricks, as is the usual
practice in oil fields).

The arguments about production figures belie the fact that the Great Leap
Forward was at least as much about changing the way of thinking of the Chinese
people as it was about industrial production. The so-called 'backyard steel
furnaces', where peasants tried to produce steel in small rural foundries,
became infamous for the low quality of the steel they produced. But they were
as much about training the peasants in the ways of industrial production as they
were about generating steel for China's industry. It's worth remembering that
the 'leaps' Mao used to talk about the most were not leaps in the quantities of
goods being produced but leaps in people's consciousness and understanding.
Mistakes were made and many must have been demoralized when they realized that
some of the results of the Leap had been disappointing. But the success of the
Chinese economy in years to come shows that not all its lessons were wasted.

Great Leap Forward and Qualitative Evidence

Of course, to make such points is to go against the mainstream western view
that the Great Leap Forward was an disaster of world historical proportions. But
what is the basis for this view? One way those who believe in the 'massive death
toll' thesis could prove their case would be to find credible qualitative
evidence such as eye-witness or documentary evidence. The qualitative evidence
that does exist is not convincing however.

Chinese history scholar Carl Riskin,believes that a very serious famine took
place but states 'In general, it appears that the indications of hunger and
hardship did not approach the kinds of qualitative evidence of mass
famine that have accompanied other famines of comparable (if not equal) scale,
including earlier famines in China.' He points out that much of the
contemporary evidence presented in the West tended to be discounted at the time
as it emanated from right-wing sources and was hardly conclusive. He considers
whether repressive policies by the Chinese governement prevented information
about the famine getting out but states 'whether it is a sufficient explanation
is doubtful. There remains something of a mystery here.' (13).

There are authors such as Roderick MacFarquhar, Jasper Becker and Jung Chang
who certainly do assert that the evidence they have seen proves the massive
famine thesis. It is true that their main works on these issues (14) ,do cite
sources for this evidence. However, they do not make it sufficiently clear, in
these books, why they believe these sources are authentic.

It therefore remains an open question why the accounts presented by these
authors should be treated as certain fact in the west. In his famous 1965 book
on China, A Curtain of Ignorance, Felix Greene says that he traveled
through areas of China in 1960 where food rationing was very tight but he did
not see mass starvation. He also cites other eyewitnesses who say the same kind
of thing. It is likely, that in fact, famine did occur in some areas. However
Greene's observations indicate that it was not a nation-wide phenomenon on the
apocalyptic scale suggested by Jasper Becker and others. Mass hunger was not
occurring in the areas he traveled through, although famine may have been
occurring elsewhere. Why are the accounts of people like Becker believed so
readily when the account of Felix Greene and the others he cites is discounted?
Of course, the sympathy of Greene for Mao's regime may be raised in connection
with this and it might be suggested he distorted the truth for political
reasons. But Becker, MacFarquhar and Jung Chang have their own perspectives on
the issue too. Could anyone seriously doubt that these authors are not fairly
staunch anti-communists?

Before addressing the question of the authentication of sources, the context
for the discussion of these issues needs to be set. Communism is a movement
that generates a massive amount of opposition. Western countries waged an
intensive propaganda war against communism. In power, communist governments
dispossessed large numbers of people of their capital and land. The whole
landlord and business class was robbed of its social power and status across
much of Asia and Europe. Unsurprisingly, this generated much bitterness. A
large number of well-educated people who were born in these countries had and
still have the motivation to discredit communism. It is not 'paranoia' to ask
that those who write about the communist era take pains to ensure that their
sources are reporting fact and are not providing testimony that has been
distorted or slanted by anti-communist bias.

In addition, the US government did have an interest in putting out negative
propaganda about Chinese communism and communism in general. Too often
discussion of this is dismissed as 'conspiracy theories' and the evidence about
what really happened does not get discussed very widely.

However, covert attempts by the US to discredit communism are a matter of
record. US intelligence agencies often sought a connection with those who
published work about communist regimes. It must not be thought that those people
they sought this connection with were simply hacks paid to churn out cheap
sensationalism. Far from it. For example, The China Quarterly published
many articles in the 1960s which are still frequently cited as evidence of
living conditions in China and the success or otherwise of government policies
in that country. In 1962 it published an article by Joseph Alsop that alleged
that Mao was attempting to wipe out a third of his population through starvation
to facilitate his economic plans! (15) This article is cited, in all
seriousness, to provide contemporary evidence of the 'massive death toll'
hypothesis in many later works on the subject (for example in the article
'Famine in China' that is discussed below).

The editor of The China Quarterly was Roderick MacFarquhar who went
on to write many important works on China's communist government. MacFarquhar
edited Volume 14 of the Cambridge History of China which covered the
period 1949-1965. He wrote The Origins of the Cultural Revolution
which includes a volume on the events of 1956 and 1957 as well as a volume on
the Great Leap Forward, which puts forward the 'massive death toll' thesis. He
also edited Mao's Secret Speeches . Printed in the pages of The China
Quarterly is a statement that it was published by Information Bulletin Ltd
on behalf of The Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF). On 13 May 1967 The CCF
issued a press release admitting that it was funded by the CIA, following an
expose in Ramparts magazine (16)

MacFarquhar stated when questioned by me that:

'When I was asked to be the founder editor of the CQ [China
Quarterly], it was explained to me that the mission of the CCF was to
encourage Western intellectuals to form a community committed to the free
exchange of ideas. The aim was to provide some kind of an organisational
counter to Soviet efforts to attract Western intellectuals into various front
organisations...All I was told about funding was that the CCF was backed by a
wide range of foundations, including notably Ford, and the fact that, of these,
the Farfield Foundation was a CIA front was not disclosed.'

In the 26 January 2006 edition of The London Review of Books
MacFarquhar
writes of 'the 1960 inaugural issues of the China Quarterly, of which I
was then the editor'

He also writes that 'secret moneys from the CIA (from the Farfield
Foundation via the Congress for Cultural Freedom, the parent of the CQ,
Encounter and many other magazines) provided part of the funding for the CQ
- something I did not know until the public revelations of the late 1960s.'

The issue goes beyond those, like MacFarquhar, who worked for periodicals
connected with the CCF. It is also alleged that other magazines received
funding that emanated from the CIA more generally. For example, Victor
Marchetti, a former staff officer in the Office of the Director of the CIA,
wrote that the CIA set up the Asia Foundation and subsidized it to the tune of
$8 million a year to support the work of 'anti-communist academicians in various
Asian countries, to disseminate throughout Asia a negative vision of mainland
China, North Vietnam and North Korea' (17).

Of course, the issue is not black and white. For example, MacFarquhar also
states that he allowed a wide range of views from different sides of the
political spectrum to be aired in his journal. He argues that Alsop's article
would have been published elsewhere, even if he had rejected it and that he did
publish replies to it which were negative about Alsop's thesis.

This may be true. However, those like MacFarquhar were publishing the kind
of things the CIA might be thought to, in general, look favourably upon.
(Otherwise why would the CIA have put up money for it?) The key point is that
these people had a source of western state funding that others with a different
viewpoint lacked.

In the last few years a new generation of writers has published alleged
eyewitness and documentary evidence for the 'massive death toll' hypothesis.
The key issue with this evidence is the authentication of sources. These authors
do not present sufficient evidence in the works cited in this article to show
that the sources are authentic.

Jasper Becker in his book on the Great Leap Forward, Hungry Ghosts,
cites a great deal of evidence of mass starvation and cannibalism in China
during the Great Leap Forward. It should be noted that this is evidence that
only emerged in the 1990s. Certainly the more lurid stories of cannibalism are
not corroborated by any source that appeared at the actual time of the Great
Leap Forward, or indeed for many years later. Many of the accounts of mass
starvation and cannibalism that Becker uses come from a 600 page document
'Thirty Years in the Countryside'. Becker says it was a secret official
document that was smuggled out of China in 1989. Becker writes that his sources
for Hungry Ghosts include documents smuggled out of China in 1989 by
intellectuals going into exile. The reader needs to be told how people who were
apparently dissidents fleeing the country during a crack-down were able to
smuggle out official documents regarding events thirty years before.

Also, Becker should have discussed more generally why he believes 'Thirty
Years in the Countryside' and the other texts are authentic. In 2001 Becker
reviewed the Tiananmen Papers in the London Review of Books (18).
The Tiananmen Papers are purportedly inner party documents which were
smuggled out of the country by a dissident. They supposedly shed light on the
Party leaderships thinking at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre. In his
review Becker seriously discusses the possibility that these papers might be
forgeries. In Hungry Ghosts, Becker needed to say why he thought the
documents
he was citing in his own book were genuine, despite believing that other
smuggled official documents might be inauthentic.

Similarly, Becker cites a purported internal Chinese army journal from 1961
as evidence of a massive humanitarian disaster during the Great Leap Forward.
The reports in this journal do indeed allude to a fairly significant disaster
which is effecting the morale of Chinese troops. However, is this journal a
genuine document? The journals were released by US Department of State in 1963
and was published in a collection by the Hoover Institution entitled The
Politics of the Chinese Red Army in 1966. According to the British Daily
Telegraph newspaper (19) 'They [the journals] have been in American hands
for some time, although nobody will disclose how they were acquired.' Becker
and the many other writers on the Great Leap Forward who have cited these
journals need to state why they regard them as authentic.

Becker's book also uses eyewitness accounts of hunger in the Great Leap
Forward. During the mid-nineties, he interviewed people in mainland China as
well as Hong Kong and Chinese immigrants in the west. He states in his book
that in mainland China he was 'rarely if ever, allowed to speak freely to the
peasants'. Local officials 'coached' the peasants before the interview, sat
with them during it and answered some of the questions for them. Given that
there is a good chance that these officials were trying to slant evidence in
favour of the negative Deng Xiaoping line on the Great Leap Forward it is surely
important that the reader is told which of the interviews cited in the book were
conducted under these conditions and which were not. Becker does not do this in
Hungry Ghosts. Nowhere in this book does he go into sufficient detail to
demonstrate to the reader that the accounts he cites in his book are
authentic.

For a few years, Hungry Ghosts, was the pre-eminent text, as far as
critics of Mao were concerned. However, in 2005 Mao: the Unknown Story
was published and very heavily promoted in the West. It's allegations are, if
anything, even more extreme than Becker's book. Of the 70 million deaths the
book ascribes to Mao, 38 million are meant to have taken place during the Great
Leap Forward.
The book relies very heavily on an unofficial collection of Mao's speeches and
statements which were supposedly recorded by his followers and which found their
way to the west by means that are unclear. The authors often use materials from
this collection to try and demonstrate Mao's fanaticism and lack of concern for
human life. They are a group of texts that became newly available in the 1980s
courtesy of the Center of Chinese Research Materials (CCRM) in the US. Some of
these texts were translated into English and published in Mao's Secret Speeches
(20).

In this volume, Timothy Cheek writes an essay assessing the authenticity of
the texts. He writes 'The precise provenance of these volumes, which have
arrived through various channels, cannot be documented...' Timothy Cheek argues
that the texts are likely to be authentic for two reasons. Firstly, because
some of the texts that the CCRM received were previously published in mainland
China in other editions. Secondly, because texts that appear in one volume
received by the CCRM also appear in at least one other volume received by the
CCRM. It is not obvious to me why these two facts provide strong evidence of
The general authenticity of the texts.

Perhaps more importantly Chang and Halliday quote passages from these texts
in a misleading way in their chapter on the Great Leap Forward. Chang claims
that in 1958 Mao clamped down on 'what he called 'people roaming the countryside
uncontrolled.' In the next sentence the authors claim that 'The traditional
possibility of escaping a famine by fleeing to a place where there was food was
now blocked off.' But the part of the 'secret' speech in which Mao supposedly
complains about people 'roaming around uncontrolled' has nothing to do with
preventing population movement in China. When the full passage which the
authors selectively quote from is read, it can be seen that the authors are
being misleading. What Mao is actually meant to have said is as follows.

'[Someone] from an APC [an Agricultural Producers' Co-operative-Joseph
Ball]
in Handan [Hebei] drove a cart to the Anshan steel [mill] and wouldn't leave
until given some iron. In every place [there are ] so many people roaming
around uncontrolled; this must be banned completely. [We] must work out an
equilibrium between levels, with each level reporting to the next higher level-
APCs to the counties, counties to the prefectures, prefectures to the provinces-
this is called socialist order.' (21)

What Mao is talking about here is the campaign to increase steel production,
partly through the use of small-scale rural production. Someone without
authority was demanding iron from Anshan to help their co-operative meet their
steel production quota. Mao seems to be saying that this spontaneous approach
is wrong. He seems to be advocating a more hierarchical socialist planning
system where people have to apply to higher authorities to get the raw materials
they need to fulfil production targets. (This sounds very unlike Mao-but that
is by the by.) He is clearly not advocating a general ban on all Chinese people
traveling around the country here!

A second, seriously misleading, quotation comes at the end of the chapter on
the Great Leap Forward. First Chang and Halliday write 'We can now say with
assurance how many people Mao was ready to dispense with.' The paragraph then
gives some examples of alleged quotes by Mao on how many Chinese deaths would be
acceptable in time of war. The next paragraph begins 'Nor was Mao just thinking
about a war situation.' They then quote Mao at the Wuchang Conference as saying
'Working like this, with all these projects, half of China may well have to
die.' This quotation appears in the heading of Chang and Hallidays chapter on
the Great Leap Forward. The way the authors present this quotation it looks as
if Mao was saying that it might indeed be necessary for half of China to die to
realize his plans to increase industrial production. But it is obvious from the
actual text of the speech that what Mao is doing is warning of the dangers of
overwork and over-enthusiasm in the Great Leap Forward, while using a fair bit
of hyperbole. Mao is making it clear that he does not want anyone to die as a
result of his industrialization drive. In this part of the discussion, Mao
talks about the idea of developing all the major industries and agriculture in
one fell swoop. The full text of the passage that the authors selectively quote
from is as follows.

'In this kind of situation, I think if we do [all these things
simultaneously] half of China's population unquestionably will die; and if it's
not a half, it'll be a third or ten percent, a death toll of 50 million. When
people died in Guangxi [in 1955-Joseph Ball], wasn't Chen Manyuan
dismissed? If with a death toll of 50 million, you didn't lose your jobs, I at
least should lose mine; [whether I would lose my] head would be open to
question. Anhui wants to do so many things, it's quite all right to do a lot,
but make it a principle to have no deaths.' (22)

Then in a few sentences later Mao says: 'As to 30 million tons of steel, do
we really need that much? Are we able to produce [that much]? How many people
do we mobilize? Could it lead to deaths?'

It is very important that a full examination of the sources Chang and
Halliday have used for their book is made. This is a call that has been made
elsewhere. Nicholas D. Kristof's review of the book in The New York Times
brought up some interesting questions. Kristof talks about Mao's English
teacher Zhang Hanzhi (Mao attempted to learn English in adult life) who Chang
and Halliday cite as one of the people they interviewed for the book. However,
Zhang told Kristof (who is one of her friends) that though she met the two
authors she declined to be interviewed and provided them with no substantial
information (23). Kristof calls for the authors to publish their sources on the
web so they can be assessed for fairness.

Deng's Campaign Against Mao's Legacy

There were some proponents of the 'massive death toll' story in the 1960s.
However, as Felix Greene pointed out in A Curtain of Ignorance anti-
communists in the 1950s and early 1960s made allegations about massive famines
in China virtually every year. The story about the Great Leap Forward was only
really taken seriously in the 1980s when the new Chinese leadership began to
back the idea. It was this that has really given credibility in the west to
those such as Becker and Jung Chang.

The Chinese leadership began its attack on the Great Leap Forward in 1979.
Deng moved against Mao supporters directing the official press to attack them
(24). This took the form of an ideological campaign against 'ultraleftism'. As
Meissner, says in his study of the Deng Xiaoping era, 'multitudes of scholars
and theoreticians were brought forth to expound on the 'petty bourgeois" social
and ideological roots of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution"
(25).

The reason for this vilification of the Great Leap Forward had much to do
with post-Mao power struggles and the struggle to roll back the socialist
policies of 1949-76. Ater Mao's death in 1976 Hua Guofeng had come to power on
a platform of 'upholding every word and policy made by Mao'. Deng Xiaoping badly
needed a political justification for his usurpation of Hua in 1978 and his
assumption of leadership. Deng's stated stance of Mao being '70% right and 30%
wrong' was a way of distinguishing his own 'pragmatic' approach to history and
ideology from his predecessors. (The pro-market policies Deng implemented
suggested that he actually believed that Mao was about 80% wrong.)

The Chinese party did everything it could to promote the notion that the
Great Leap Forward was an catastrophe caused by ultra-leftist policies. Marshal
Ye Jian ying, in an important speech in 1979 talked of disasters caused by
leftist errors in the Great Leap Forward (26). In 1981 the Chinese Communist
Party's 'Resolution on Party History' spoke of 'serious losses to our country
and people between 1959 and 1961'. Academics joined in the attack. In 1981
Professor Liu Zeng, Director of the Institute of Population Research at the
People's University gave selected death rate figures for 1954-78. These figures
were given at a public academic gathering which drew much attention in the West.
The figures he gave for 1958-1961 indicated that 16.5 million excess deaths had
occurred in this period (27). At the same time Sun Yefang, a prominent Chinese
economist publicly drew attention to these figures stating that 'a high price
was paid in blood' for the mistakes of the Great Leap Forward (28).

As well as the internal party struggle Deng wanted to reverse virtually all
of Mao's positive achievements in the name of introducing capitalism or
'socialism with Chinese characteristics' as he described it. Attacking the
Great Leap Forward, helped provide the ideological justification for reversing
Mao's 'leftist' policies. Deng dissolved the agricultural communes in the early
1980s. In the years following the Great Leap Forward the communes had begun to
provide welfare services like free health care and education. The break up of
the Commune meant this ended. In an article about the Great Leap Forward, Han
Dongping, an Assistant Professor at Warren Wilson College, described a
'humorous' report in the New York based Chinese newspaper The World
Journal
about a farmer from Henan province who was unable to pay medical bills to get
his infected testicles treated. Tortured by pain he cut them off with a knife
and almost killed himself (29). This kind of incident is the real legacy of
Deng's 'reforms' in the countryside.

It is often said that Deng's agricultural reforms improved the welfare of the
peasantry. It is true that breaking up the communes led to a 5 year period of
accelerated agricultural production. But this was followed by years of decline
in per capita food production (30). Despite this decline, western commentators
tend to describe the break-up of the communes as an unqualified economic
success.

In fact, breaking up the peasant communes created sources of real hardship
for the peasants. By encouraging the Chinese ruling class to describe the Great
Leap Forward as a disaster that killed millions, Deng was able to develop a
political line that made his regressive policies in the countryside seem
legitimate.

Deng Xiaoping Blames Mao for Famine Deaths

For Deng's line to prevail he needed to prove not only that mass deaths
happened from 1959-61 but also that these were mainly the result of policy
errors. After the Great Leap Forward the official Chinese government line on
the famine was that it was 70% due to natural disasters and 30% due to human
error. This verdict was reversed by the Deng Xiaoping regime. In the 1980s
they claimed the problems were caused 30% by natural disasters and 70% by human
error . But surely if Mao's actions had led to the deaths of millions of
peasants, the peasants would have realized what was going on. However, the
evidence is that they did not blame Mao for most of the problems that occurred
during the Great Leap Forward.

Long after Mao's death, Professor Han Dongping traveled to Shandong and
Henan, where the worst famine conditions appeared in 1959-1961.

Han Dongping found that most of the farmers he questioned favoured the first
interpretation of events, rather than the second, that is to say they did not
think Mao was mainly to blame for the problems they suffered during the Great
Leap Forward (31). This is not to say that tragic errors did not occur.
Dongping wrote of the introduction of communal eating in the rural communes. To
begin with, this was a very popular policy among the peasants. Indeed, in 1958
many farmers report that they had never eaten so well in their lives before.
The problem was that this new, seeming abundance led to carelessness in the
harvesting and consumption of food. People seemed to have started assuming that
the government could guarantee food supplies and that they did not have
responsibility themselves for food security.

Given the poverty of China in the late '50's this was an error that was bound
to lead to serious problems and the Communist leadership should have taken
quicker steps to rectify it. Three years of awful natural disasters made things
much worse. Solidarity between commune members in the worst effected regions
broke down as individuals tried to seize crops before they were harvested.
Again, this practice made a bad situation worse. However, it must be stressed
that the farmers themselves did not tell Han Dongping that errors in the
organisation of communal eating were the main cause of the famine they suffered.
Han Dongping, himself, severely criticizes Mao for the consequences of his
'hasty' policies during the Great Leap Forward. However he also writes 'I have
interviewed numerous workers and farmers in Shandong, Henan, and I never met one
farmer or worker who said that Mao was bad. I also talked to one scholar in
Anhui [where the famine is alleged to have been most serious-Joseph Ball] who
happened to grow up in rural areas and had been doing research in the Anhui, he
never met one farmer that said Mao was bad nor a farmer who said Deng [Xiaoping]
was good.' (32).

It may be argued that Han Dongping's, at least partial, sympathy for Mao
might have coloured his interpretation of what he heard from the peasants.
However, it must also be noted that two of his grandparents died of hunger
related diseases during the Great Leap Forward and Han Dongping often sounds
more critical of Mao's policies in this period than the peasants he is
interviewing.

Massive Deaths? The Demographic Evidence.

The relative sympathy of the peasants for Mao when recalling the Great Leap
Forward must call into question the demographic evidence that indicates that
tens of millions of them starved to death at this time. Western academics seem
united on the validity of this evidence. Even those who query it, like Carl
Riskin, always end up insisting that all the 'available evidence' indicates that
a famine of huge proportions occurred in this period.

In fact, there is certainly evidence from a number of sources that a
famine occurred in this period but the key question is was it a famine that
killed 30 million people? This really would have been unprecedented. Although
we are used to reading newspaper headlines like 'tens of millions face
starvation in African famine' it is unheard of for tens of millions to actually
die in a famine. For example, the Bangladesh famine of 1974-75 is remembered as
a deeply tragic event in that nation's history. However, the official death
toll for the Bangladesh famine was 30,000 (out of a single-year population of 76
million), although unofficial sources put the death toll at 100,000 (33).
Compare this to an alleged death toll of 30 million out of a single-year
population calculated at around 660-670 million for the Great Leap Forward
period. Proportionally speaking, the death toll in the Great Leap Forward is
meant to be approximately 35 times higher than the higher estimated death toll
for the Bangladesh famine!

It is rather misleading to say that all 'available evidence' demonstrates the
validity of the massive deaths thesis. The real truth is that all estimates of
tens of millions of Great Leap Forward deaths rely on figures for death rates
for the late 1950s and early 1960s. There is only very uncertain corroboration
for these figures from other statistics for the period.

The problem is that death rate figures for the period 1940-82, like most
Chinese demographic information, were regarded as a state secret by China's
government until the early 1980s. As we shall see, uncertainty about how these
were gathered seriously undermines their status as concrete evidence. It was
only in 1982 that death rate figures for the 1950s and 1960s were released (see
Table 1).

They purportedly showed that the death rate rose from 10.8 per thousand in
1957 to 25.4 per thousand in 1960, dropping to 14.2 per thousand in 1961 and 10
per thousand in 1962. These figures appear to show approximately 15 million
excess deaths due to famine from 1958-1961 (34).

Table 1. Official Death Rates for China 1955-1962

Year

Death Rate(per thousand)

1955

12.3

1956

11.4

1957

10.8

1958

12.0

1959

14.6

1960

25.4

1961

14.2

1962

10.0

1963

10.0

1964

11.5

(Source Statistical Yearbook of China 1983)

US Demographers and the Chinese Statistics

Chinese data on famine deaths was used by a group of US demographers in their
own work on the subject. These demographers were Ansley Coale, John Aird and
Judith Banister. They can be said to be the three people that first popularized
the 'massive death toll' hypothesis in the West. Ansley Coale was a very
influential figure in American demography. He was employed by the Office of
Population Research which was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1980s
when he was publishing his work on China. John Aird was a research specialist
on China at the US Bureau Of The Census. In 1990, he wrote a book published by
the American Enterprise Institute, which is a body that promotes neo-liberal
policies. This book was called Slaughter of the Innocents and was a
critique of China's one-child birth control policy. Judith Banister was another
worker at the US Bureau of the Census. She was given time off from her
employment there to write a book that included a discussion of the Great Leap
Forward deaths (35). John Aird read her book pre-publication and gave her
advice.

Judith Banister produced figures that appear to show 30 million excess deaths
in the Great Leap Forward. This is nearly twice the figure indicated by
official Chinese statistics. She believes the official statistics under-estimate
the total mortality because of under-reporting of deaths by the Chinese
population during the period in question.

Banister calculates the total number of under-reported deaths in this period
by first calculating the total number of births between the two censuses of 1953
and 1964. She does this using data derived from the census and data from a
retrospective fertility survey carried out in 1982. (Participants in the survey
were asked to describe the number of babies they had given birth to between 1940
and 1981). Once the population of 1953 and 1964 is known, and the total number
of births between these two years is known, it is possible to calculate the
number of deaths that would have occurred during this period. She uses this
information to calculate a total number of deaths for the eleven year period
that is much higher than official death rates show.

To estimate how many of these deaths occurred in the Great Leap Forward,
Banister returns to the official Chinese death rate statistics. She assumes
that these figures indicate the actual trend of deaths in China in this period,
even though they were too low in absolute terms. For example, she assumes that
the official death rate of 25 per thousand in 1960 does indeed indicate that a
huge increase in the death rate occurred in 1960. However, she combines this
with her estimates of under-reporting of deaths in the period 1953-1964 to come
up with a figure of 45 deaths per thousand in 1960. In years in which no famine
is alleged the death toll also increases using this method. In 1957, for
example, she increases the death rate from the official figure of 10.8 per
thousand to 18 per thousand. Banister then compares the revised death rates in
good years with the revised death rates in alleged famine years. Banister is
then able to come up with her estimate of 30 million deaths excess deaths during
the Great Leap Forward (36).

Questions Over the Chinese Statistics

A variety of Chinese figures are quoted to back up this thesis that a massive
famine occurred. Statistics that purport to show that Mao was to blame for it
are also quoted. They include figures supposedly giving a provincial break-down
of the increased death rates in the Great Leap Forward (37), figures showing a
massive decrease in grain production during the Great Leap Forward (38) and
also figures that apparently showed that bad weather was not to blame for the
famine (39). These figures were all released in the early 1980s at the time of
Deng's 'reforms'.

But how trustworthy are any of these figures? As we have seen they were
released during the early 1980s at a time of acute criticism of the Great Leap
Forward and the People's Communes. China under Deng was a dictatorship that
tried to rigorously control the flow of information to its people. It would be
reasonable to assume that a government that continually interfered in the
reporting of public affairs by the media would also interfere in the production
of statistics when it suited them. John Aird writing in 1982 stated that

'The main reason so few national population data appear in Chinese sources,
however, is central censorship. No national population figures can be made
public without prior authorization by the State Council. Even officials of the
SSB [State Statistical Bureau] cannot use such figures until they have been
cleared. ' (40)

Of particular interest is the question of the circumstances under which the
death rate figures were arrived at by the State Statistical Bureau. The figures
given for total deaths during the Great Leap Forward by US and Chinese academics
all depend on the key death rate statistic for the years in question.

Of course, if we knew in detail how information about death rates was
gathered during the Great Leap Forward we might be able to be more certain that
it is accurate. The problem is that this information is not available. We have
to just take the Chinese governments word for it that their figures are true.
Moreover, statements provided by Aird and Banister indicates that they believe
that death rate figures were estimates and not based on an actual count of
reported deaths.

Aird states that 'The official vital rates [birth and death rates] of the
crisis years [of the Great Leap Forward] must be estimates, but their basis is
not known.' (41).

Banister writes that China did try to start vital registration in 1954 but it
was very incomplete. She writes 'If the system of death registration was used as
a basis for any of the estimated death rates for 1955 through 1957, the rates
were derived from only those localities that had set up the system, which would
tend to be more advanced or more urbanized locations.' (42).

Banister suggests that the situation did not improve very much during or
after the Great Leap Forward. She writes:

'In the late 1960's and most prior years, the permanent population
registration and reporting system may have been so incomplete and uneven that
national or provincial statistical personnel had to estimate all or part of
their totals. In particular, in the 1950's the permanent population
registration and reporting system was only beginning to be set up, and at first
it did not cover the entire population. All the national population totals for
the 1950's except the census total, were probably based on incomplete local
reports supplemented by estimates. ' (43)

She also writes that 'In all years prior to 1973-75 the PRC's data on crude
death rates, infant mortality rates, expectation of life at birth, and causes of
death were nonexistent, useless, or, at best, underestimates of actual
mortality.' (44)

The reader searches the work of Aird, Coale and Banister in vain for some
indication as to why they can so confidently assert figures for tens of millions
of deaths in the Great Leap Forward based on official death rate figures. These
authors do not know how these figures were gathered and especially in Banister's
case, they appear to have little faith in them.

Alleged Deaths Among the Young in the Great Leap Forward

Some demographers have tried to calculate infant death rates to provide
evidence for the 'massive death toll' hypothesis. However, the evidence they
come up with tends to muddy the picture rather than providing corroboration for
the evidence from death rates.

One calculation of deaths made by this method appears in the 1984 article
'Famine in China' (45). This article reviewed the previous work of Aird, Coale
and Banister. It accepted the contention of these latter authors that a massive
level of deaths had occurred, overall, during the Great Leap Forward. However,
the authors also try to calculate separate figures for child and adult deaths in
this period. The evidence this latter article tries to put together is very
frequently quoted by those writing about the era.

The authors of 'Famine in China' calculate infant deaths using the 1982
Retrospective Fertility Survey. They use this survey to calculate the number of
births in each year of the Great Leap Forward. Once the number of births is
estimated for each year it is possible to calculate how many of those born in
the years 1958-1962 survived to be counted in the census of 1964. This can be
compared with survivorship rates of babies born in years when no famine was
alleged.

They use model life tables to calculate how many of the babies dying before
the census died in each famine year. They then convert this figure into a
figure for the number of deaths of those aged under ten in each of the famine
years. This final figure is arrived at by using life tables and period
mortality levels.

The authors of this article argue that the famine began in 1958-9. They
calculate that 4,268,000 excess deaths for those aged under 10 occurred in this
period which represents a doubling of the death rate for this age group (see
Table 2). Yet at the same time there was an excess death figure of only 216000
for those over 10 (in a country of over 600 million this figure is surely well
within any reasonable margin of error). The explanation is that in the absence
of effective rationing, children were left to starve in this period. But in
famines, it is traditionally both the very young and the very old who both
suffer. But in this year only the young suffer. Then in 1960-1961 the number
of excess deaths for under 10s is reduced to 553,000 whereas the number for over
10s shoots up to 9 million. Even more bizarrely, 4,424,000 excess child deaths
are calculated for 1961-62 but no excess deaths for those over 10 are calculated
to have occurred in this period.

Table 2. Estimated Excess Deaths Due to Famine

Fiscal Year

Estimated excess deaths under age 10
('000s)

Estimated excess deaths age 10 and over ('000s)

1958-59

4,268

216

1959-60

2,291

7,991

1960-61

553

9,096

1961-62

4,424

0

(source Aston et al 1984)

There is clearly a paradox here. According to the death rate provided by the
Chinese, 1960 was the worst calendar year of the famine. The death rate
increased from 10.8 per thousand before the famine to 25.4 per thousand in 1960
which was by far and away the peak year for famine deaths. If this was true,
then we would expect 1959-60 and 1960-61 to be the worst fiscal years in terms
of numbers of child deaths. Yet according to the authors only 24.6% of excess
child deaths occurred in these fiscal years as opposed to 98.75% of the excess
deaths of those aged ten or over!

It is hard to understand why there would have been such a large infant
mortality rate in 1958-59. Everyone agrees that 1958 was a bumper harvest year
even if grain production figures were exaggerated. The bulk of the Chinese crop
is harvested in Autumn (46) so it's difficult to see why massive deaths would
have begun at the end of 1958 or even why so many deaths would have all occurred
in the first three months of 1959. As we have seen, Han Dongping, Assistant
Professor in Political Science at Warren Wilson College, questioned peasants in
Shandong and Henan where the worst effects of the problems in the 1959-1961
period were felt. They stated that they had never eaten so well as they had
after the bumper harvest of 1958 (47). Official death rate figures show a
slight increase from 10.8 per thousand in 1957 to 12 per thousand in 1958. Why
were infant deaths so much worse in the fiscal year 1958-59 according to the
figures that are presented by demographers? Why did the situation improve in
the year of alleged black famine?

This, it is claimed by the authors of 'Famine in China', is because a
rationing system was introduced that assisted all those of working age and below
but left the old to die. Certainly, there is some evidence that the young of
working age received higher rations than the old because the young were
performing manual labour (48).

However, in 1961-2, when the authors allege the famine was still occurring,
the excess death rate for under 10s shoots up to 4,424, 000 and the excess death rate for over
10s reduces to zero. It is alleged that rationing was relaxed during this
period allowing the young to die. It is not explained why no old people died
during this period as well. Are the authors claiming that in famines, Chinese
families would let their children die but not old people? The authors provide
no evidence for this counter-intuitive implication of their analysis.

They try to back up their thesis with figures that claim to show a reduction
in the numbers of those in older age groups between the two censuses of 1953 and
1964. The argument is that in a country that was developing in a healthy way
the numbers of old people in the population should grow rather than fall. They
argue that the figures for China in this period show a decline in the numbers of
old people due to the way in which they were denied rations during the Great
Leap Forward.

But the figures they quote are not consistent with mass deaths caused by a
shortfall in rations for all people over a certain age. The authors state that
age specific growth rates fall for males aged over 45 and for females aged over
65 between the two censuses. What kind of a rationing system would have led to
such a disparity? One that provided sustenance to women aged 45-65 but not men
of the same age? Besides even after the age of 65 the figures for women are not
consistent. The number of those aged 75-79 grew by 0.51% on the figures
presented. This figure compares well with the growth rates of age groups under
65. For example, the numbers of 20-24 years old grew by 0.57% and the numbers
of 45-49 year olds by 0.55%. The figures for women do not show a pattern
consistent with a rationing system that discriminated against the old. Faulty
source statistics are a far more plausible explanation for the confusing figures
the authors present, than their own difficult to swallow hypotheses about
rationing.

(source ibid)

This article does not dispel doubts about massive famine deaths. It is true
the authors of the article can point to some corroboration in the evidence they
present. For example there is a reasonable correlation between the number of
births given by the Fertility Census of 1982 and birth rate figures allegedly
gathered in the years 1953-1964. Also there is reasonable correlation between
the survivorships of birth cohorts born in the famine to the 1964 census and
their survivorship to the 1982 census.

If different pieces of evidence, supposedly gathered independently of each
other, correlate, then this provides some evidence that the authors hypothesis
is true. In which case there might seem to be a stalemate. On the one hand
there is the correlation between this evidence, on the other there is the huge
mismatch between child mortality and adult mortality in alleged famine years.

However, we must remember the concerns that exist about the general validity
of population statistics released by the Chinese government after the death of
Mao. In the light of these uncertainties, the correlations between the birth
rate figures and the Fertility Survey figures are not really decisive.
Correlations between Chinese population figures occur elsewhere and have been
considered by demographers. Banister speaks in another connection of the
possibility of 'mutual interdependence' of Chinese demographic surveys that were
supposedly conducted independently of each other. She notes that the census
figure for 1982 and population figures derived from vital registration in 1982
were supposedly gathered independently. However, there is an extremely great
correlation between the two figures (49). The possibility of such 'mutual
interdependence' between the Fertility Survey figures and the birth rate figures
should not be ruled out.

In addition it must be said that the authors of 'Famine in China' only
present one estimate of the survivorship of babies born during the Great Leap
Forward. Ansley Coale's article, published in the same year (50) shows a
reasonably significant but much smaller dip in survivorship in the years 1958-59
to the 1982 census than that shown in 'Famine in China'. This would indicate
far less 'excess' infant deaths in the years in question. In addition Coale's
figures show no dip in survivorship of babies born in 1961-2 to the 1982 census,
in contrast to the figures presented in 'Famine in China'.

Doubts about the survivorship evidence combined with doubts about the death
rate evidence greatly undermine established beliefs about what happened in the
Great Leap Forward. Overall, a review of the literature leaves the impression
that a not very well substantiated hypothesis of a massive death toll has been
transformed into an absolute certainty without any real justification.

Questions About Chinese Census Information

A final piece of evidence for the 'massive death toll' thesis comes from raw
census data. That is to say we can just look at how large the number of those
born in 1959-1961 and surviving to subsequent censuses is compared to
surrounding years in which no famine has been alleged. We can get this evidence
from the various censuses taken since the Great Leap Forward. These indeed show
large shortfalls in the size of cohorts of those born in famine years,
compared to other years.

Even, if it was granted that such shortfalls did occur they do not
necessarily indicate massive numbers of deaths. Birthrate figures released by
the Deng Xiaoping regime show massive decreases in fertility during the Great
Leap Forward. It is possible to hypothesise that there was a very large
shortfall in births without this necessarily indicating that millions died as
well. Of course, there had to be some reason why fertility dropped off so
rapidly, if this is indeed what did happen. Clearly hunger would have played a
large part in this. People would have postponed having children because of
worries about having another mouth to feed until food availability improved.
Clearly, if people were having such concerns this would have indicated an
increase in malnutrition which would have lead to some increase in child
mortality. However, this is in no way proves that the 'worst famine in world
history' occurred under Mao. The Dutch famine of 1944-1945 led to a fertility
decline of 50%. The Bangladesh famine of 1974-1975 also led to a near 50%
decrease in the birth rate (51). This is similar to figures released in the Deng
Xiaoping era for the decline in fertility in the Great Leap Forward. Although,
both the Bangladesh and the Dutch famines were deeply tragic they did not give
rise to the kind of wild mortality figures bandied about in reference to the
Great Leap Forward, as was noted above. In Bangladesh tens of thousands died,
not tens of millions.

However, we should not automatically assume that evidence from the single
year age distributions are correct. There is a general problem with all efforts
to derive information from single-year age distributions from the 1953 and 1964
censuses. These figure only appeared in the early 80s (52) when all the other
figures that blamed Mao for killing millions emerged. Censuses afterwards (e.g.
in 1982, 1990 etc.) continue to show shortfalls but again caution should be
exercised. Banister speaks of consistency in the age-sex structures between the
three censuses of 1953, 1964 and 1982 with very plausible survival patterns for
each age group from census to census.. She writes 'It is surprising that
China's three censuses appear to be almost equally complete. One would have
expected that the first two counts missed many people since they were conducted
in less than ideal circumstances. The 1953 enumeration was China's first modern
census taken with only six months of preparation soon after the State
Statistical Bureau was established....The 1964 census was taken in great
secrecy...and included a question on people's class origins...that might have
prompted some to avoid being counted.' (53).

Ping-ti Ho of the University of British Colombia wrote that the 1953 census
was based, at least in part, on estimates not the counting of population and
'was not a census in the technical definition of the term' (54). Yet the age-
structure of this census correlates extremely well with all the subsequent
censuses.

Adding to the muddle, John Aird received evidence about the age-sex
distribution in the 1953 census from Chinese, non-official academic sources in
the 1960s. He found the figures unreliable, stating that the numbers for 5-24
year olds are lower than would be expected and the figures for those aged over
75 are much too high. He proposed substituting a hypothetical age-sex structure
for these figures for the purposes of academic debate (55).

Given such doubts, it is surely possible that the consistent age-sex
structures in successive structures may be effected by a certain amount of
'mutual interdependence' between records.

A trawl through the evidence reveals decisively that absolute certainty in
any, politically controversial, historical question should never be derived from
'academic research' or 'official statistics'. Politics always effects the
presentation of statistics and the history of any period tends to be written by
the winners. In relation to China, admirers of Mao's socialist policies clearly
were not the winners.

Conclusion

The approach of modern writers to the Great Leap Forward is absurdly one-
sided. They are unable to grasp the relationship between its failures and
successes. They can only grasp that serious problems occurred during the years
1959-1961. They cannot grasp that the work that was done in these years also
laid the groundwork for the continuing overall success of Chinese socialism in
improving the lives of its people. They fail to seriously consider evidence that
indicates that most of the deaths that occurred in the Great Leap Forward were
due to natural disasters not policy errors. Besides, the deaths that occurred
in the Great Leap Forward have to be set against the Chinese people's success in
preventing many other deaths throughout the Maoist period. Improvements in life
expectancy saved the lives of many millions.

We must also consider what would have happened if there had been no Leap and
no adoption of the policies of self-reliance once the breach with the Soviet
Union occurred. China was too poor to allow its agricultural and industrial
development to stagnate simply because the Soviets were refusing to help. This
is not an argument that things might not have been done better. Perhaps with
better planning, less over-optimism and more care some deaths might have been
avoided. This is a difficult question. It is hard to pass judgement what others
did in difficult circumstances many years ago.

Of course it is also important that we do learn from the mistakes of the past
to avoid them in the future. We should note that Mao to criticized himself for
errors made during this period. But this self-criticism should in no way be
allowed to give ammunition to those who insist on the truth of ridiculous
figures for the numbers that died in this time. Hopefully, there will come a
time when a sensible debate about the issues will take place.

If India's rate of improvement in life expectancy had been as great as
China's after 1949, then millions of deaths could have been prevented. Even
Mao's critics acknowledge this. Perhaps this means that we should accuse Nehru
and those who came after him of being 'worse than Hitler' for adopting non-
Maoist policies that 'led to the deaths of millions'. Or perhaps this would be
a childish and fatuous way of assessing India's post-independence history. As
foolish as the charges that have been leveled against Mao for the last 25 years,
maybe.